Adding Ingredients on Secondary Fermenter

When can you start getting creative by adding other ingredients to your secondary fermentation, like oak chips, lemon zest, fruit, and etc. I'm extremely new and only on my second career batch. Am I ahead of myself? If not what types of beers are flexible with added ingredients such as oak chips or fruit without ruining the batch?

The beauty of homebrewing is that the sky is the limit in regards to recipe formulation; it's all up to the brewer. Generally you would want to at least get comfortable with a few recipes before deciding whether or not you want to add fruit. Then again, I've seen people jump head first into this on their first few batches.

There are a lot of recipes that call for secondary additions, and the styles range from light to dark, sweet to bitter. I would recommend reading through some of those.

I definitely found that when I first started brewing I really wanted to experiment and make the craziest things possible. There is lots to learn by experimenting like this, plus it's fun! You'll have successes and failures but that's all part of the learning process. So I say go for it. As far as styles, you can pretty much do anything but a good base for most things would either be a blonde or American wheat.

Funny because I'm sitting at work thinking the same thing... What I would add , how much of it ect lol great mind think alike.

It's cool to see people think alike. Question, if I were to add something like Lemon Zest or Oak Chips. How much would I add to a 5 gallon batch? Also, how do I add it? Do I put the ingredient in the secondary bucket or carboy first then siphon the primary in? Or do I add the ingredient on top after siphoning the primary into the secondary? Or do I mix it in? I'm guessing I should not mix it.

Right now I have an autumn ale fermenting in primary. Any thoughts of a secondary fermenting ingredient to add for this batch?